Patents and the Penguin

In an article entitled Patents and the Penguin, the non-partisan Alexis de Tocqueville Institute observes, "[i]t is not uncommon today for patent fights to erupt even between parties that have engaged in rigorous diligence. By contrast, open source developers and distributors do not engage in patent searches, thus, there is a real possibility we will see a major patent fight involving open source, sooner than later. The article also ominously warns: "IBM will be competing with large Linux-based developers and distributors themselves. As the deployment of Linux increases, it can be expected that IBM will be going head-to-head with its "friends" in the Linux community. It is unquestionable that the biggest irony of all will be when Big Blue resorts to using its war chest of patents against a "friend" in the Linux community." Even Homer Simpson can see this coming.

Comments

Is this some kind of joke?

[tooloftheoligarchy]

What the hell kind of half-ass "think tank" publishes a paper with two flagrant spelling errors ("hobbiest", presumably meaning "most hobby", and "eying") in the first two paragraphs?! Microsoft needs to invest in higher quality FUD.

Re:B. S.

[HiThere]

OK. They were bought. But the thing is, they didn't have to compromise their principles to produce this report. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institue is well known as a CONSERVATIVE think-tank. They will always reliably come to conclusions that favor big business. Union Carbide could have hired them to produce a report on why Bophal deserved to have the accident that wiped it off the map. And they would have done it cheap. (For Bophal to hire them on why it was Union Carbide's fault, though, would have been quite expensive, and would have produced a shoddy report.)

I.E., if you know that this group has produced a report, and you know the topic, you can predict the conclusion without the effort of reading the report.